In recent years, some very smart people--like Michael Berube, Marc Bousquet, Anthony Grafton, and William Pannapacker, to name a few--have offered on these pages their thoughts about how to fix graduate education and, by extension, the academic labor market, which, everyone seems to agree, has "unraveled". The author approaches this issue from a…

Descriptors: Graduate Study, College Faculty, Faculty Workload, Career Development

Hailey Schnorr has spent years peering into the bedrooms, kitchens, and dorm rooms of students via Webcam. In her job proctoring online tests for universities, she has learned to focus mainly on students' eyes. Ms. Schnorr works for ProctorU, a company hired by universities to police the integrity of their online courses. ProctorU is part of a…

Just listen to Dimitrius Graham sing. As a music major at Morgan State University, he seems keenly aware of certain realities about his life: His talent is undeniable and probably innate, and his future is promising but uncertain. He could make a career singing on Broadway or climbing the charts as a Billboard phenomenon. Because he went to…

Everyone tells tales about advisers. Some of the stories are heartwarming, while others are prurient, even horrifying. Most everyone has such stories on tap because the adviser-student relationship is the most crucial in turning a graduate student into a professional. the ties between graduate students and advisers are both professional and…

In his first book, "Acts of Faith," Eboo Patel describes his early encounters with interfaith events in the late 1990s. He was not impressed. "They were excruciatingly boring," he writes. Why so much talk and so little action, his restless, twenty-something self had wondered. "And where were the young people?" Fast forward a dozen years. Now 37,…

Day and night the locals chatter. They counsel and console, bicker and rant. Their questions are endless. Though often hopeful, they never stop pounding the drums of worry. This is College Confidential, a vast virtual realm where visitors can find the best and worst of human nature. Here, in moderated discussion forums, people help strangers. They…

Pogo recognized long ago that we often are our own worst enemies. Sure, he was a cartoon character, but he had a point--especially in higher education, where self-sabotage seems to be a standard characteristic of academic careers. In the author's 30 years as a professor, five years as a dean, and three years as a provost, he has observed many…

The author's Coursera course, "The Modern and the Postmodern," might have been labeled "course least likely to become a massive open online course (MOOC.)" In many ways, it is an old-fashioned "great books" course, and in the 20 years the author has been teaching it, it has always relied heavily on student interaction in the classroom. Last summer…

Descriptors: Online Courses, Large Group Instruction, College Instruction, Philosophy

The past year has seen the meteoric rise of the MOOC, or massive open online course, which lets 100,000 strangers--or more--log on to free classes branded "Stanford" or "Harvard." "The New York Times" went so far as to call 2012 the "Year of the MOOC." Amid the cacophony of voices calling for colleges to cut costs and reduce student debt, many of…

Descriptors: Higher Education, Seminars, College Instruction, Small Group Instruction

Spring is interview season for aspiring presidents, provosts, and deans. It's when search consultants spend a lot of time sitting in meeting rooms at airport hotels watching candidates engage with hiring committees in the ritual dance of the preliminary interview. Even after 15 years of that, the author is constantly surprised by the approaches…

Many professors recognize that online education is changing the landscape of academe. But faculty members at several colleges are making it clear that they will not be steamrolled. Philosophy professors at San Jose State University last week wrote an open letter saying they refused to use material from an edX course, taught by a famous Harvard…

Colleges and universities looking to recruit leaders from within the faculty ranks will face more and more difficulty. From their respective positions--as a provost (Janel) and a search consultant (Dennis)--they often hear senior executives in higher education say that building a new generation of faculty leaders will be a major challenge in the…

Einstein was blessed with a rare genius. He also understood the intellectual weight of a flight of fancy. He turned over the idea in his mind for a decade before concluding that the light beam next to him would appear to be at rest even though it was traveling at the speed of light. While it may be tempting to focus on Einstein's cognitive…

The academic job market is overcrowded, but departments are hiring, and each year thousands of graduate students and other candidates will get phone calls offering them tenure-track positions. It is typically a moment of mutual giddiness. The department heads are excited at the prospect of a terrific new colleague; the job applicants now know that…

Some job candidates seem to be doing well only to fall flat in one venue: They ace the teaching demo and the dinner meeting, but stumble during the research talk. Perhaps the candidate was disorganized, too strident, or just long-winded and boring. Whatever the cause, the outcome is a strong negative ding when it comes time to vote on the hire.…